Book review: Free the People to Free the Money to Free the People, an Organize the Rich Anthology
Free the People to Free the Money to Free the People is a collection of stories that revolves around a central commitment to cross-class, cross-race movements for justice in the United States. As democracy fractures and justice is increasingly denied in the US, contributor Braeden Lentz’s appeal that “we can’t afford to leave any power on the table” resonates — even from afar.
Complied by editors Mike Gast, Marian Moore and Alex Tom, these stories document how the rich have participated in movements for justice, democracy and working-class power beyond their individual granting. Each chapter brings various experiences and perspectives to life, all springing from a common understanding that the country’s economic system is broken and its winners have a role in remaking it.
In doing so, the book offers a candid overview of efforts spanning more than 50 years, covering lessons such as the need to strike a balance between ‘soft pillow’ and ‘Marxist/Leninist’ approaches when working with wealth-holders — that is, “being welcoming and accepting, while also pushing people to shift money and power” (Collins, p. 143).
At the same time, contributors offer a clear-eyed view of the work that remains: “For too long, we have been satisfied being the rebellious rich without being connected to the labor movement or part of a real plan for winning power for working people” (Gast, p. 211).
This 50-year history is made tangible in Gast and Moore’s three-page fold-out chart that maps an ‘organise the rich’ family tree, illustrating how this work has been made possible over the years by a vast ecosystem of people, organisations and networks.
Interestingly, this evolution of the cross-class movement for economic justice in the US has common roots with progressive philanthropy here in Australia. Several authors refer to the 1977 publication Robin Hood Was Right (Collins, Garner and Rodgers) and the critical role it played in documenting and advancing early organising efforts.
Reichstein Foundation Chair, Jill Reichstein, travelled to the US in the late 1970s and was given a copy of that book. It provided a roadmap for the Reichstein Foundation’s early work, and Jill bought many copies back to Australia to distribute amongst Australian philanthropists.
Despite that early convergence, the ‘organise the rich’ movement in the US has grown substantially compared to Australia. It’s fair to say that ‘organising’ is not well understood here and the term is rarely used outside the union movement and a subset of not-for-profits. That said, as the book offers:
Organising is a skill like anything else. You can learn it. It can be taught… what I feel progressives with access to wealth in this country don’t get enough of are
places to develop organizing skills. Especially around the family systems and institutions they can uniquely influence. (Bhansali, p. 26)
We should expect a challenge in building explicitly cross-class movements in a country that prefers to see itself as classless. Contributors refer to the reluctance of the American rich to be honest about the extent of their wealth and to use it as a platform for advocacy. I suspect that in Australia, reluctance would be putting it mildly.
Nevertheless, there is potentially a uniquely Australian path to what Lentz refers to as “a significant collective force of the rich, a surprise regiment, ready to throw their full support behind strategic, multi-racial working-class movements that seek governing power” (p. 51). This regiment is already mobilisng, and in recent years it’s been great to see the growth of initiatives that are playing their part in the Australian ecosystem, including Resource Generation Australia, Mannifera and the Small Giants Academy.
We should also expect that the introspection and personal reckoning — a key part of the evolution of this work in the US — might take a different form in Australia. While activation through self-work will suit some, a near, or at least sufficient, equivalent might be reached through hard-headed political and economic analysis of what’s required if we’re to avoid large-scale social and ecological breakdown. Whatever form this work takes, all of it is needed, for as US experience suggests, we can’t afford to leave any power on the table.
